Ephraim of Ainos at work: a cycle of epigrams in the margins of Niketas Choniates

2021 ◽  
Vol 114 (3) ◽  
pp. 929-1000
Author(s):  
Julián Bértola
Keyword(s):  
English Translation ◽  
Critical Edition ◽  
Manuscript Tradition ◽  
Critical Text ◽  
Methodological Considerations ◽  
The City

Abstract This article offers the first critical edition of a cycle of epigrams found in the margins of six manuscripts of Niketas Choniates’ History. This paper also proposes the attribution of the poems to Ephraim of Ainos, an author mainly known for his verse chronicle, which has Niketas Choniates as a source. Our poems occur in a group of manuscripts which we already knew Ephraim had used for his chronicle. Many formal parallels between the epigrams and the chronicle point to the same author and a book epigram connects one important manuscript with the city of Ainos. This paper reassesses the manuscript tradition of the epigrams with special emphasis on the marginalia of Niketas Choniates. The critical text of the poems is accompanied by two apparatuses and an English translation. The edition is preceded by some methodological considerations and followed by two appendices and three indices.

History of Scholarship

2021 ◽  
pp. 130-141
Author(s):  
Jan Willem Drijvers
Keyword(s):  
English Translation ◽  
Critical Edition ◽  
British Museum ◽  
Original Language ◽  
Special Place ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
Important Publication ◽  
History Of Scholarship ◽  
The City

The manuscript of the Syriac Julian Romance was part of the Nitrian manuscripts which came into the possession of the British Museum in the 1830s. The Julian Romance received broader attention in 1874 in an important publication by the German orientalist Theodor Nöldeke. Six years later, J. G. E. Hoffmann published the complete Syriac work under the title Syrische Erzählungen; it is the only (non-critical) edition available of the Romance. In 1928 Hermann Gollancz published an English rendering. In 2016 a much better and reliable English translation of the Romance was published by Michael Sokoloff; besides a translation, it also includes the Syriac text of Hoffmann’s edition from 1880. This chapter offers a discussion of the scholarship of the Romance and deals with issues such as the place and date of origin of the text, the original language, the possible authorship, function, and genre of the text, as well as its place within Syriac literature. The Romance as we have it is generally accepted as having been composed in Edessa. The northern Mesopotamian city has a special place and a prominent role in the Julian Romance, in particular in the Jovian Narrative. One of the purposes of the text seems to have been to emphasize Edessa as the city of Christ par excellence, for which reason it deserves a special place in the world of Christendom, as well as to present Edessa as the model of Christian government for the whole empire.

Aristotle's De motu animalium

2020 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
English Translation ◽  
Critical Edition ◽  
Causal Explanation ◽  
Greek Text ◽  
Manuscript Tradition ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Self Motion ◽  
Independent Branch

The book contains the proceedings of the 19th Symposium Aristotelicum (Munich 2011), dedicated to Aristotle’s De Motu Animalium, which expounds a common causal explanation of animal self-motion. Besides a philosophical introduction by Christof Rapp and essays on the individual chapters of De Motu Animalium, there is a new critical edition of the Greek text and a philological introduction by Oliver Primavesi, and an English translation of the new text by Benjamin Morison. The philosophical introduction and the essays on the individual chapters aim to give a balanced representation of scholarly debate on the treatise and related issues since the publication of Martha Nussbaum’s edition and commentary in 1978. The new edition and translation of the Greek text were made necessary by the discovery, in 2011, of a second, independent branch of the manuscript tradition. The new text, which is the first to be based on a full collation of all forty-seven extant Greek manuscripts, differs in 120 significant cases from the text published by Nussbaum in 1978.

The Four Signs of the Art: Edition and Translation of an Alchemical Epistle Attributed to Ḫālid b. Yazīd and its Latin Translation

Arabica ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 68 (5-6) ◽  
pp. 557-627
Author(s):  
Marion Dapsens ◽  
Sébastien Moureau
Keyword(s):  
English Translation ◽  
Critical Edition ◽  
Latin Translation ◽  
Manuscript Tradition ◽  
The Many

Abstract In the article, the authors present a study, a critical edition and an English translation of an Arabic alchemical epistle attributed to the Umayyad prince Ḫālid b. Yazīd, together with its Latin translation recently identified by the authors. Among the many alchemical works attributed to Ḫālid b. Yazīd, this untitled Risāla (inc.: ‮إني رأيت الناس طلبوا صنعة الحكمة‬‎) is the second most represented in the manuscript tradition, with no less than twelve witnesses containing it. Its partial Latin translation, available in six manuscripts, was also attributed to Calid, but the name of the translator remains unknown.

Delhi in Transition, 1821 and Beyond

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Lived Experience ◽  
English Translation ◽  
East India Company ◽  
Multiple Sources ◽  
Original Manuscript ◽  
English East India Company ◽  
The Times ◽  
First Time ◽  
The City

Commissioned by the English East India Company to write about contemporary nineteenth-century Delhi, Mirza Sangin Beg walked around the city to capture its highly fascinating urban and suburban extravaganza. Laced with epigraphy and fascinating anecdotes, the city as ‘lived experience’ has an overwhelming presence in his work, Sair-ul Manazil. Sair-ul Manazil dominates the historiography of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century compositions on Delhi in Persian and Urdu, and remains unparalleled in its architecture and detailed content. It deals with the habitations of people, bazars, professions and professionals, places of worship and revelry, and issues of contestation. Over fifty typologies of structures and several institutions that find resonance in the Persian and Ottoman Empires can also be gleaned from Sair-ul Manazil. Interestingly, Beg made no attempt to ‘monumentalize’ buildings; instead, he explored them as spaces reflective of the sociocultural milieu of the times. Delhi in Transition is the first comprehensive English translation of Beg’s work, which was originally published in Persian. It is the only translation to compare the four known versions of Sair-ul Manazil, including the original manuscript located in Berlin, which is being consulted for the first time. It has an exhaustive introduction and extensive notes, along with the use of varied styles in the book to indicate the multiple sources of the text, contextualize Beg’s work for the reader and engage him with the debate concerning the different variants of this unique and eclectic work.

PROCLUS ON PLATO'S TIMAEUS 89e3–90c7

2013 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-45 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rüdiger Arnzen
Keyword(s):  
Present Article ◽  
English Translation ◽  
Critical Edition ◽  
Arabic Translation ◽  
Manuscript Transmission ◽  
History Of ◽  
Insight Into

AbstractAlthough the existence of an Arabic translation of a section of Proclus' commentary on Plato's Timaeus lost in the Greek has been known since long, this text has not yet enjoyed a modern edition. The present article aims to consummate this desideratum by offering a critical edition of the Arabic fragment accompanied by an annotated English translation. The attached study of the contents and structure of the extant fragment shows that it displays all typical formal elements of Proclus' commentaries, whereas its conciseness and shortcomings raise certain doubts about its completeness. As a parergon, the article includes an analysis of a hitherto neglected letter by Ḥunayn ibn Isḥāq, which is attached to the fragment in the manuscript transmission. In addition to providing some insight into the origins of the Proclian fragment, this letter sheds some light on the Syriac and Arabic reception of some works by Hippocrates and Galen, especially Hippocrates' On Regimen in Acute Diseases and the history of its Arabic translation.

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